Happy New Year

Hi everyone. The blog has taken a back seat since I have been back to full time work, as have the sewing and early stages of the veggie gardening this spring. I had to buy a few punnets of seedlings for the first time ever this spring to supplement what I had time to grow from seed. I got over it quickly once I started harvesting pre-Christmas.

Here are a few pics of the veggie patch almost five months after the last post. The veggies are definately benefitting from the removal of a large privet tree on the neighbor's side of the fence - many more full sun hours. This will probably be the last post again for a while since I'm back to work on Tuesday. Have a very happy and healthy 2012.

 Leeks left to flower for the bees, apple cucumber, zucchini

 Lettuce, rainbow chard, beetroot, capsicum, tomatoes, fig in white pot

climbing beans, strawberries, squash, tomatoes, spinach, artichoke, basil

 

purple bean flower, Mai li

  Purple King beans

 

BTW - My little asparagus corner yielded 1.8 kilos this year! Not bad for less than a square metre in it's fourth year since planting and second year of harvesting. Photos from September below (I can't believe how much everything has grown!).

The Dirt

Finally something to post! It has been a long cold rainy winter. No veggie gardening and no sewing to speak of, so nothing to blog about for a while. I usually post pretty gardening pics but today it's just the dirt.  While the sun was shining I weeded, added blood and bone and sowed a very late (but not too late) green manure crop of mustard seed. So here's my blank canvas for next season, with the asparagus coming up in the narrow patch under the clothesline!

Weeded, mostly cleared, levelled and mustard seed sown .I left some leeks in the front, Marigolds in the back and Salad Burnett and garlic on the edges.

Asparagus coming up in the front, Artichoke behind it, some Strawberries and a rogue Spinach towards the back. Otherwise lovely dirt! This is a really unattractive back yard this time of year as you can tell from my neighbor's bins and carport to the left,  Hills Hoist to the right. I pulled out the last of the broccoli in this patch and am having that for dinner tonight - yum!

How Not To Act Old

I saw this poem by Pamela Redmond Satran recently and thought I would share it. It is very apt for much of what is happening in my life right now!

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own,
even if she never wants to or needs to...
something perfect to wear if the employer,
or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who lets her cry...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family...
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems,
and a recipe for a meal,
that will make her guests feel honoured...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a feeling of control over her destiny...
how to fall in love without losing herself..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to quit a job,
break up with a lover,
and confront a friend without;
ruining the friendship...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't take it personally...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table..
or a charming Inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
What she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...

The poem's author, Pamela Redmond Satran, also has a great blog called How Not To Act Old. One of my favorite posts is #68 Mooch Off Your Parents... 'Catherine Finn, who is a bona fide futurist with a Washington firm called Social Technologies, advises those who don’t want to act old: “Be over-dependent on your parents. Have them lend you money or buy you something you really don’t need. Go a step further and move in with your parents. Then complain about how terrible it is to live with your parents." Hehehe

Strangely enough, the above poem is often mis-credited to Maya Angelou.

Olive Mellor 'Grow Your Own'

Here are a few pages from a Herald Sun publication by Olive Mellor. There's no date, but I would say it's probably 1950's. I can't find any information about this publication in the National Library catalogue or anywhere else online. Olive Mellor taught horticulture for many years at Burnley and wrote for the Australian Home Beautiful. She also designed more than 500 gardens and was one of the first full-time female students at Burnley Horticultural College (for which she had to receive special permission from the Minister for Agriculture). She was a lecturer when Edna Walling attended Burnley and one of her contemporaries.  I feel honored to have taught my Burnley students (when I was lecturing) in the same plots down in the Burnley Field Station.

Here's a calendar for growing vegetables in the home garden in Melbourne, complete with when to spray your D.D.T.! Nothing organic in those days - it was all about using the new wonder chemicals to maximise yield and feed the masses post WWII.  Chemicals were all about increasing food production and minimising the waste caused by pests and plant diseases.

Scroll down for a table of what to plant when to feed a family of four for the year including how much seed and how many seedlings are required and how much space is needed

Calendar - January and February (click on image for larger version)

Calendar - March to July (click on image for larger version)

 Calendar - August to December (click on image for larger version)

What to plant to keep the family in veggies all year!  (click on image for larger version)

 Advert for snail killer on the back cover. Metaldehyde is still a main ingredient used in snail pellets today. It is highly toxic and often deadly to pets and small children. Note the happy couple with knee-high lettuces but no children or animals to be seen - clever marketing! I love the bright colors in this ad and the sense of easy instant action implied by the numbers "Better in 3 ways" and the highlighted words "Change", "New", "Better than ever", "WORLD'S BEST", "SUPERCHARGED"

Remember, these were the days when D.D.T. was sprayed liberally by the truckload into the air in residential neighborhoods to cut down on mosquitos in the spring and summer - both in the U.S. and Australia. We still get sprayed with insecticides before we get off the plane from any international flight arriving in Australia, so some things really haven't changed! Personally though, I find a jar with with a little beer half-buried in the veggie-patch works just fine to kill the slugs and snails and doesn't hurt anyone.  They crawl in and die a happy death. I just have to hold my nose when I'm setting it out because I can't stand the smell of beer!

Vintage Storage Solutions

With only one teeny-tiny closet in my abode I have had to come up with with some creative and attractive storage solutions.  I started collecting old interesting suitcases a while ago and purchase more when needed.  These are two that I got recently on Ebay for about $15 each.

The smaller 'Sky-Chief' fibreboard case holds trims sorted by colour in zip-lock bags. I love the patterns inside and out on this one and the burgundy-coloured plastic (maybe bakelite?) handle.

This is the 'sewing corner' of my bedroom. The Singer sewing table is just to the left. I keep my fabric stash in the blue and green cases (from the Salvos and Chapel St Bazaar). Current-ish project fabric goes in the pink 'Miso Pretty' shopping bag so I can get to it easily (or forget about it completely as the case is with what's in there now!). My old blue-beast 'Automatic Zig-zag' machine is in the blue case on the right.

Decoupaged boxes for patterns. Everyone else seems to like the photocopied vintage pattern box the best. I like the black, white and brown one more! It's made from pages of an old genetics textbook (there's a big double-helix under the chicken on the bottom of the pic) and a craft book I found at the Salvos. It sort of sums up my interests and I like the texture and quality of the old book pages.

My linen storage. A cane suitcase purchased on Ebay and an old laundry basket that a neighbor was tossing out.

Are there any treaty-treats in there?

The woman who sold this to me said this was the case her parents used when they migrated to Australia from England. It had been in storage since then and still had the original ID tag. I love the history behind this one! Next to it is a linen sachet in an antique flower-packet fabric from l'ucello. She sells these at Klein's perfumery if you can't get into her lovely shop on the city and they are divine! I bought a bunch of them for gifts and had to keep some for myself...that seems to happen with most things I buy from l'ucello!

The original P&O Orient Lines sticker on the outside of the case.

I remember when I was very young my mother used to hang big brightly-coloured department store shopping bags on the wall of my room to store toys. Everything got swept up at the end of the day and tossed into the bags on the walls. We lived in Greenwich, Connecticut and there was something very special when I was a kid about having bags from 'The City' (New York) on display all the time. It reminded me of train rides into New York and grown-up lunches at Bloomingdale's by the big Bjorn Wiinblad ceramic fountain (although I think the fountain might have been in the Stamford, CT Bloomingdale's- it was still very grown up).  

What are your storage solutions? I would love to hear!